u/Last_Swordfish9135

The stereotype seems to be that fanfic readers don't read anything else, or that the only original works they read are smutty, tropey original romance fiction, but in my experience that really isn't the case. For the past few years I've really only been reading romance fanfiction and really dense nonfiction, lmao. I think it scratches a similar itch for me, funnily enough. I feel like it takes a lot of emotional energy to get invested in the lives and struggles of a new cast of characters, and even if the subject material is denser, nonfiction doesn't require that same emotional energy most of the time, in the same way that fanfic doesn't because I'm already invested in the characters.

What about you guys? I'm curious if this is a common thing, people being interested in entirely different subject matters and genres in fanfic vs. OG works, or if most people actually like original fiction that's similar to the fanfic they read.

https://preview.redd.it/3sixyr3ixeah1.png?width=1119&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7386a7396bdd0495de475f31275ed2654bd9ebf

大家好，

I've been studying Chinese for a few years now, I think I'm at an alright level but I've been trying to work on improving my tones lately. One thing I've noticed as I try to pay more attention to them is that in a lot of native speech, certain tones sound more like changes in stress than pitch. In particular the fourth tone sometimes sounds more like harsh stress on that specific syllable than a falling pitch when native speakers are talking quickly. Is there any truth to this, or do I just need more ear training?

CS applicant here, committed to Purdue for the fall. I got waitlist offers at CMU and UMich, which are both better ranked than Purdue and great schools I'd love to go to, but at that point I was just so tired of waiting for committees to decide whether they wanted me or not that I didn't take either of them. I'd rather just choose a school and get excited for it, you know?

I honestly hate how many prestigious schools are now waitlisting thousands of applicants when they know that they're realistically only going to take a few dozen. If you don't want the kid, just tell them and let them move on.

I'm a high school senior right now, still in the closet. I recently committed to a college and have since joined the school's LGBTQ discord server, which is pretty cool. I've talked to people there a bit, and so far everyone has been really nice. I got a dm request from a user I didn't recognize, but they were from the same server so I accepted, but I also went to check this guy's history in the server, and he joined like two days ago, has said basically nothing. The server has a role system where you can have gender/sexuality on your profile, he just has the role for cis and nothing else.

I talked with him a bit, he seemed really eager but didn't say anything too unusual. He then asked a few hours later if I had snapchat or instagram, I said no, he then asked if I wanted to trade face reveals and since then I haven't responded.

The server's verification isn't that rigorous, so there's not really any proof that he is or isn't also an incoming freshman, and even if he is I kind of just got a bad vibe from the whole thing. However, given these are all people I'm going to be going to school with in a few months, I feel weird about ghosting/blocking somebody in the middle of a conversation like this. Idk what I should do. He did add on after a few minutes that it's also fine if I don't want to share photos, so maybe he's just awkward? Idk. I'm definitely not going to be sending selfies to strangers on the internet, but I don't really know how to respond.